Bush thinks Defense Department is 1,259 times more important than greener cars
The New York Times today called President Bush's 2008 budget proposal "improbable" (and other have said much less kind things about it), but I want to take a minute to look at what monetary value the President is willing to put on renewable/alternative energy for cars.
Bush's budget calls for $179 million for biofuels research, $81 million for research on advanced hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles, and $309 million "to complete the President's five-year, $1.2 billion commitment to support development by 2020 of commercially viable hydrogen infrastructure technologies and fuel cell vehicles that produce no air pollution or greenhouse gas emissions." Hydrogen is obviously the big winner here, but that's to be expected from this White House. All told, these three items add up to $569 million dollars.
Now, let's compare these numbers with one or two others in the proposed budget.
- $481.4 billion for the Department of Defense's (plus supplemental funds of $93.4 billion for 2007 and $141.7 billion for 2008) for a grand total of $716.5 billion dollars. Alternate reading: The military is 1,259 times more important than greener cars.
- $2.8 billion to combat the spread of illegal drugs. Alternate reading: Stopping pot smokers is 4.9 times more important than greener cars.
(Note: I think I did all the math right in this post, but billions have a lot of zeroes, so if I goofed, it's an honest mistake. Clear it up for me in the comments).
[Source: White House, EERE]
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 3)
Charles S 1:20PM (2/09/2007)
I'd like to focus more on the argument that spending more money on "defense" equates "safety" or "freedom"
One person says that more money on "defense" means more police officers... that's not true.
Another person says that more money on defense means that we're safe from communists or terrorists... well, the B2 Bombers or Patriot Missiles didn't really prevent Timothy McVay from bombing a building either.
Another says that more "defense" means FREEDOM, yet how can take explain our government actions in regards to domestic wire-tapping, or arresting people and jailed them indefinitely without providing any legal reason?
Here's what it CAN mean for increase in defense budget; more weapons (contractors get rich), more contractors (more mercenaries for hire), more logistics (more money for corporations like Haliburton), etc. Of course, there are will also be money going to troops, their health care POST war, etc.
Yes, "defense", meaning Military, *IS* important, but Military is NOT the only tool in keeping us SAFE or FREE. There are many nations out there that can be considered strong, but provide little freedom or safety to its citizens. I don't care if Bush cares about green cars or not, and comparing it to military spending is a bit absurd. I only chimed in because people seems to be confused that the words "defense spending" guarantees American freedom or safety.
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Doug R 2:29PM (2/09/2007)
And that is exactly what all of these people would do #19. There is no threat until something happens, then you didn't do enough. Then if enough time passes, the attack was a conspiracy and we're back to there being no threat, except global warming of course.
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Charles S 1:23PM (2/09/2007)
"If it has a legitimate place in the world it can make it on it's own merits."
That sounds REAL good on paper, except great many things in our world is a direct benefit of government supported efforts, INCLUDING advances in military armaments. Internet was started as a military project, but was also advanced by government supported universities and science foundations.
If we just want to concentrate on automobiles, then let's see if Joe Inventor down the street can actually compete with the ailing Big Three right now? How about all the articles on all the automotive blogs about new technologies in engine designs? If none of the big auto makers are willing to invest into the design, how long will it take before YOU can drive one?
Hybrids, fuel cells, EVs; all these things have been around a LOOOOOONG time, and yet, only now do companies sees the value in developing such technologies. Yes, many things have "merits" but they don't necessary come to light without some major investment, which includes government funding.
It's ok to disagree about what should or should not be funded by our government, but saying that if something is "good" then it'd automatically be pushed by the free market is just naive.
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EnviroBob 1:38PM (2/09/2007)
Scatter,
Plants, trees and humans need C02 to survive, which is why it is an integral part of nature. In fact, nature itself produces roughly 30 times more CO2 than man. Human produced CO2 accounts for 0.1% of what nature does. Water vapor is the greatest source of CO2 emissions, hence the sarcasm about banning large bodies of water. You see, without C02, everything DIES.
As far as volcanoes are concerned, they emit more than CO2. I was referring to things such as SO2 (222 cubic kilotons in 1980 from Mt. St. Helens), Mercury and other 'bad' natural emissions.
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HanyE 3:06PM (2/09/2007)
I find it funny that people have their minds made up for them by affiliating with a certain political group. No matter what your political affiliation is, you need to stop and think about the point of this article.
The amount of money spent on defense far outshadows any other type of spending including technology advancement including green-type technology. The argument isn't should we spend on defense or not. The question is how much is too much when some of the money could be put to other uses. How much should be spent to get immediate benefits and how much toward future benefits.
The argument of we are at war so of course defense spending will be high has merit. The counterpoint here is should we be at war in the first place, some would argue our current state is not one of defense but of offense. Either way we are in it and have no way out of it now. Can we carry out the war to it's end while still putting some of the funds into other areas of spending? I believe we can but our administration is too strongly influenced by the people profiting the most from our current state.
As far as politics are concerned no 2 people have the same views, someone always wants things to sway in their favor. We wouldn't be human if we didn't. But there comes a time when we have to think with an open mind, look at both sides of the argument before passing judgement.
I agree with spending enough to protect our country and to preserve our interests abroad as long as those interests benefit the general population not just those looking to grow their investments.
There are 2 ways a company can make more money, pay less for it's supplies and costs of operation or by charging more for it's product. How did the oil companies make record profits the last 2 years, was it by paying less or charging more? Our current situation has allowed them to charge more while maintaining the same costs. The only way to reduce our dependance on them is to move away from needing their product so badly. Therefore allowing us to spend our incomes on other things that we enjoy rather than what we have to have(energy). By being green, we can reduce(not eliminate) the need for their product.
The fastest way to improve green technology is by receive funding from the government. It's not the only way but it does speed up the process greatly. True many others have done great things in the past without government funding but think of how much faster they could have done them with a little extra help. By our administration putting almost the entire country's nest egg into military spending, they are showing how little they care about advancing alternate energy development and are content with a slow pace of advancement.
Some of you will try to pin me into one group or another for thinking the way I do but I honestly do not affiliate myself with either political group. I simply think for myself and decide where I stand on issues as I analyze them. There are some things I'm liberal about and there are some things I'm conservative about. When it comes to improving technology, I believe our government should do more than it has been to help quicken the pace of advancement. After all we have a government by the people for the people, don't we? At least that was the original intention of the founding fathers.
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Doug R 3:13PM (2/09/2007)
Charles S, you're own comments speak volumes about the point I was making. Hybrids, etc. are being pushed because it has become politically convenient to do so thanks to the mis-information the environmentalists provide. They are obviously not a good idea on their own and don't sell unless you scare everyone into believing all this man made global warming nonsense.
There are too many examples to count where the free market accepted a new idea as viable. You are obviously ignoring the history I mentioned. It's naive to think otherwise and no, government involvement and private investment is not the same thing. You need to pick up an economics book. Are you seriously suggesting that had the internet not been explored by the government via the military that it would never have come to fruition? Whose naive?
You're points about military power is as assinine as they come. The military expenditures didn't stop Tim McVeigh, brilliant. The countries that you speak of providing little freedom do so from the butt end of a gun. The countries that you speak of providing little security do so at the convenience of the U.S. military doing it for them!
Those "contractors", "mercenaries" and "troops" you speak of make it possible for you to spew your BS in relative safety and freedom! I'm sorry it bothers you so much to pay for them. Too bad it all can't be sunk into your 40+ year failure of entitlement programs.
EnviroBob, give up. We're wasting our time. They're intellectual midgets living in their own universe.
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Henry 3:07PM (2/09/2007)
Its not the democratic party who is against the War in iraq its 70% of America. Democrats have not performed any action in order to reduce the war in Iraq. To be a Democrat does not mean you're anti-war just like being conservative does not mean you must agree with phone taps on anyone and reduced taxes for oil companies.
There are no terrorists in Iraq who have acted on the US. It was all BS from the Conservative party according to yesterday's news.
If this site was so Liberal then why is Pelosi being ecorazzied?
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Doug R 4:36PM (2/09/2007)
70% Henry? Keep dreaming. New York Times poll probably. Over 80% of the troops that are there (and know what's going on better than anybody) support the mission. But of course, they're uneducated. Terrorists are just about everywhere except Iraq, go figure.
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W 3:42PM (2/09/2007)
I think I like trees better than people. They're so green...and quiet.
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Fred 3:46PM (2/09/2007)
I think I'm 1259 times more important than you.
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loikll 4:21PM (2/09/2007)
Sebastian, despite your astonishingly poor judgment in wanting to needlessly piss off half of your potential readership, I'll resist the temptation to give you the verbal beating you deserve and calmly point out a few simple things that you seem somehow to have overlooked.
- The Federal Government has an absolute constitutional mandate to maintain a standing military and provide for national defense. There is no such constitutional mandate to invest in energy research at all. It's rather "liberal" therefore to spend so much as a single dollar on such items.
- It is possible for the Feds to spend $500 billion on defense. However it would be completely impossible for them to spend anywhere near that that much on energy research. The limitation is in actual real, live, trained and educated humans and the resources they would use. There are only so many electrical engineers, corn engineers (whatever), appropriately trained technicians and college perfessors, who are not already being paid to work on these issues. If you're in that line of work it's already Fat City for you as it is, where do you think another $500 billion will go?
- There is already a thriving and fast growing market in the private sector of people doing all this research ALREADY in hopes of making money. I'm surprised no one told you. This is the target of massive funding, venture capitalists pouring in money, IPOs, etc. There is a fortune to be gained by someone who can make an electric car that is actually useful, for example, and you will apparently be shocked to learn that that motivates people.
I'm sure that this is all new to you, so perhaps you should print this off and have some smart person read it to you, slowly, every couple of days. Be persistent, use crayons, it might sink in.
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EnviroBob 4:40PM (2/09/2007)
Doug R,
There are two basic problems with most 'Greenies'. The first is that they approach nature as being a constant, when there is nothing constant about nature except for the fact it is variable. If the Sierra Club was standing on the beach when the turtle first crawled out of the water, they'd have been shoving him back in because things shouldn't change. You'd think that the earth has had a constant temperature of 72 degrees for it's entire history until man came along, created machines and screwed the whole thing up. Never mind the fact that cyclical temperature changes are normal. I guess man caused the ice age and cars are to blame for the 'global warming' of the 17th century.
The second problem is that the people who follow the big environmental groups like Greenpeace, etc, do so blindly. They don't seem to notice or caree that collectively, these groups rake in hundreds of billions of dollars- and no one complains at the disparity between the money Greenpeace hauls in vs the Salvation Army. What about income inequality? Compare the amount of money raised by these groups to that of the oil industry and see whose profit margin is greater.
But hey, if they facts don't fit your agenda, just change them, ie; Michael Mann's 'Hockey Stick' chart of the earth's temperature. Facts and truths are meaningless when you only have to spew rhetoic to support your cause.
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jeff 4:42PM (2/09/2007)
I just think military budgets are a little overblown in the US. Its important to defend your country, its important to support your troops, whether you think they're where there are for a good reason or not. But $700,000,000,000 is a lot of money. Forget green cars, what's the annual budget for education? Could that $700B somehow be cut down to $500B? I'm pretty sure 200 billion dollars a year could put a lot of kids through school. And who knows, maybe if the US didn't spend so much money kicking ass in various parts of the world, it wouldn't be as much of a target as it already is.
On another note, CO2 and its role as a greenhouse gas is definitely a complicated topic. But please don't say things like "We need CO2 to live, so CO2 emissions from cars can't be bad." Sure CO2 is a natural element in the atmosphere, but scientists the world over are a little concerned over the imbalance in CO2 levels that humans have caused recently.
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Doug R 5:12PM (2/09/2007)
Couldn't have said it better myself loikll (#30). In fact, I have tried to make your point and it went over all their heads. Nothing has been or is possible without government, didn't you know that? All the great inventions of history required government funding, or so the revisionist historians have said above.
Never question their environmental religion man!!! Love the crayon part dude.
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Henry 5:00PM (2/09/2007)
50% US troops think they're at a deadend.
http://www.militarycity.com/polls/2006_main.php
"For the first time, more troops disapprove of the president’s handling of the war than approve of it. Barely one-third of service members approve of the way the president is handling the war, ac cording to the 2006 Military Times Poll.
When the military was feeling most optimistic about the war — in 2004 — 83 percent of poll re spondents thought success in Iraq was likely. This year, that number has shrunk to 50 percent."
59% of troops think Iraq War is a mistake
".. in this year’s poll only 41 percent of the military said the U.S. should have gone to war in Iraq in the first place, down from 65 percent in 2003. That closely reflects the beliefs of the general population today — 45 percent agreed in a recent USA Today/Gallup poll."
Terrorists were not in Iraq in 2002. How many terrorists would be in US according to the country that invades us? How many Americans would find peace with corrupt organizations when their family, home and well-being has been blown to pieces?
We should be spending money that helps defend America not oil. Putting military bases all over the world is definitely helpful for US security if they are used to defend and protect not invade.
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Chris M 5:59PM (2/09/2007)
What is missing from this debate is how well the money is used. A thousand well spent could be worth more than billions squandered.
We should be looking on what we are getting for the tax funds spent. Are we getting our moneys worth? Is money being lost to fraud? Is money being wasted on projects that are doomed to fail?
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Doug R 10:08AM (2/10/2007)
I read your sources Henry and have already talked to some people I know over there, they don't agree. I did notice that you left out the part where they think the media hates them. Wonder why that is? Maybe because it's been their obsession to turn everyone against them?
You're absolutely right Henry, no terrorists in Iraq before the war, everywhere else but not Iraq. Just like Sadaam developed and used WMDs for years, even on his own people. He ignored the U.N. for years, but then all of a sudden, he decided to get rid of them. Is that because some one said pretty please? Couldn't be the fact that we gave him over a month to figure out what to do with them could it? No, of course not! We all know so much more about what goes on in the world than those silly intellegence agencies don't we?
I believe we had an invasion Henry, it only took 19 of them.
There are alot more than just 2 EnviroBob, I've tried to point out everything you've said and then some on several of these blogs. If you say anything that contradicts their beliefs it must come from big oil and you work for them somehow, yet their leaders and activists are beyond reproach. They demonstrate anger and contempt for oil profits and joyful glee when reminded government averaged 5 times as much in taxes from the same source.
The latest so-called science from Paris is particularly hilarious. 2-11.5 degrees temp. increase and 7-23 inches sea level rise by 2100. Very scientific in a CYA sort of way. I certainly wouldn't want them to narrow it down in any way! To say an increase as low as 2 degrees proves their point validates your statement. They think climate change is static, regardless of the millions of yrs. of archaeological evidence that says otherwise.
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XR 6:49PM (2/09/2007)
you know you sound crazy, right?
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frank78 7:42PM (2/09/2007)
Loikll,
Excellent points. The vast majority of research is already being done by private industries. The trends are towards green technologies. In fact, green tech could resemble the internet tech boom of the late 90s. One of the main reasons I read this and other blogs is to see what looks promising to invest money into. The 1st importance to me is to see what's being done for energy independence, which I believe is far more important than Iraq is right now. But that's another topic.
NOW:
The unfortunate part of govt involvement in just about ANYTHING, let alone a subject like 'green' techonologies is that govt screw it up royally. Everything. Oh yes- everything. The only things the govt does well are things it contracts out to private companies (anyone here ever work at a govt job, where often there are 5 employees for every 1 that's actually needed?)
We can see this happening already. The feds and state govts are throwing money at corn farmers and ethanol plants. Ethanol is soooo inefficient as a fuel (diesel and biodiesel are 2.5 times as efficient mileage wise in a car). Plus, corn is an inefficient source for ethanol. AND ethanol via corn requires alot more fertilizer, lots of fresh water, causes inflation with corn and maize (Mexicans are furious over this because corn is used for their tortillas, an integral part of their diets), causes inflation in the long term with meat. Oh and let me just reiterate. Your Honda Civic that gets 38 mpg with a gas engine now gets about 25 mpg with E85, but the fuel costs as much (thanks only to govt subsidies, otherwise it would cost at least a dollar more per gallon).
The political motivations of the politicians outrides what is actually good for the country. I do think that politicians pushing for ethanol (buy votes in farming states) will do us more harm. It will cost us more for our fuel and their interference into the market will harm better technologies and budding technologies.
DB
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Dave 9:06PM (2/09/2007)
Hey Scatter -
Spell "center" however you want, America gets a capital 'A'.
But seriously, green cars do not curb extremism - extremists don't need an excuse! And stopping the flow of money to oil producing nations will probably only make us more "evil". We can't win...
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